Scarface: The World is Yours Review

When the world is at your fingertips, how rewarding is revenge?

While Scarface does a fantastic job of bringing the world of the movie to gamers, it wouldn't be a great experience if the actual gameplay didn't match up. Luckily, Radical has delivered on most every aspect of this.

One of the wholly original elements of gameplay ties directly into the character of Tony Montana. One of the aspects of Tony's character that Sierra and Radical wanted to allow gamers to take advantage of is his seeming invulnerability during raging shootouts, and the Balls meter is the result. By performing a number of "ballsy" moves, like driving on the wrong side of the road or threatening a passerby, you'll fill the Balls meter. The quickest and most common way to do this is in battle. By targeting certain body parts (kidney, head, arms, groin, etc.) you'll earns Balls, and taunting someone after you kill them will earn you more. This latter element means that the game has a certain rhythm to combat where you'll kill someone, tap the taunt button and then move on to the next guy.

When you've filled the Balls meter, you're able to enter Rage mode whereupon you'll fight in a first-person perspective for a short while with unlimited ammo and invulnerability. Though you're playing in first-person, the game uses a loose lock-on system where you'll target anyone close to the center of the screen, helping non-FPS fans to take maximum advantage of this.

The catch to this mode and the part that has both a good and bad side is that you'll refill a bit of health for every person you kill while on a rampage. This means that you don't need to be reliant on finding health packs and it keeps combat flowing along at a quick pace. You're also rewarded for being the right bastard that Tony inherently is, which is great.

The downside is that missions are either much easier or much more difficult depending on how many Balls you have at the start. For example, one mission has you get dropped off at an ambush with no weapons. You need to kill a couple guys with machetes and then take out a slew of armed soldiers. The first time we tried this we had a full Balls meter and were easily able to recover from our unarmed beating at the beginning. Due to a mistake on our part at the end, we needed to retry the mission. Unfortunately, the game reset the Balls meter to nil and made the mission much more difficult than before. While picking up health packs isn't as natural to the gameplay as this, at least the designer would be able to perfectly plan a mission's layout. With the Balls meter, it's impossible for them to tell how full it'll be when you enter, which can be the difference between either walking through everyone or dying in seconds.

One of the ways that Radical has drastically improved upon most open world games is in terms of the aiming system. The controls work in a freelook manner, much like Max Payne or other third-person shooters, allowing you to freely aim and take out enemies. You'll actually earn more Balls for doing things this way, so you're rewarded for skill. If you want to use the lock-on system however, which most folks probably will, you simply need to aim near an enemy and press the appropriate button. This means that you don't need to tap the lock button and then hope it finds someone relevant. If you want to shoot at a specific soldier, simply aim in his general direction and then hit the button - it's simple and works very well. Once you've targeted an enemy, the aim controls then move your reticule inside the lock-on area, allowing you to target specific body parts for more Balls or a headshot or what have you. It's a great system that works almost flawlessly.